Hello all!

Hope you’re all as well as you can be. Today I have a fun new-ish to me hobby to share with you. I’ve recently been dressing for various operas and I realised very quickly that there were going to be long chunks of time to fill, enter knitting. I decided to make the Whitmoor Sweater pattern which was released in February by Ami of the Tailoress Studio mostly because it’s beautiful and I wanted one.

I went to Loop in Islington and their very helpful staff helped me consider the benefits of using 2 yarns together verses 1 double knit yarn. I ended up going with a DK just to keep things as simple as possible, but I choose a ‘fluffy’ one to try and retain the look of 2 yarns. It’s called Orkney Angora (50% angora 50% wool), I paid £61.25 for 5 balls and throughout the knitting process it never let me forget the fluffiness that I chose it for. The little bits of fluff got everywhere, and I’m hoping that it will gradually stop losing fluff the more I wear it. The most important part is that it’s not itchy or uncomfortable to wear against the skin at all.

In terms of the knitting up, the lace part of the yoke was really good to be able to concentrate on at work and the plain knitting was perfect to accompany TV watching. I did get stuck at 2 or 3 points but Ami always replied quickly on Instagram to sort me out which I much appreciated! Once the lacey bits were done the rest came together quite quickly. I’m so proud of the lacework. It’s not something I’ve attempted before, and it worked out remarkably well. The execution may not be perfect in places but you definitely get the gist of what the pattern is supposed to look like! Whenever there a technique came up that I wasn’t completely sure about I’d pop over to youtube which would tell me exactly how to go about things.

Measurements wise, my bust is a couple inches smaller than the smallest size in the pattern but I wasn’t comfortable with the concept of grading down a knitting pattern so figured I’d just go for baggy. I started the ribbing 20” down from the armhole which makes it slightly shorter than specified. I wish I’d gone slightly shorter so it would work better with dresses and skirts. The sleeves I did between the length of the tapered and bell sleeves because I didn’t want them to be too baggy.

When I was looking for a jumper to knit my number one criteria was quite a tight neckline. The reason I didn’t really wear the jumper I made for my dissertation was because the neckline was too wide and it just didn’t look good with t-shirts worn underneath. I found it quite hard to find jumpers with narrower necklines and whilst this one is depicted with a narrower neckline mine is slightly wider than I would like. My theory is that my cast on is too stretchy so the neckline doesn’t keep it’s stretch as well?

All in all I consider it a humongous triumph. I’ve just had a lot of fun dyeing some yarn with natural dyes over the last few weeks so I’m excited to knit that up into all sorts of fun stuff. Let me know if the dyeing process is of interest to any of you!

Thanks for reading!

Lauren xx